Lack Of Sleep Is Damaging The Mental Health Of Children

A leading psychologist is calling for British children to get more sleep after research has revealed their mental health could be seriously impacted by getting less than the recommended ten hours a night.

The new research from bedmaker Silentnight and the University of Leeds, found that 36 per cent of primary school age children get eight hours or less sleep a night and a worrying 15 per cent are getting as little as seven hours or less a night;

Psychologist Dr Anna Weighall from the University of Leeds, believes levels this low could be dramatically impacting children’s ability to function in day to day life.

Last week was Children’s Mental Health Week – an initiative aiming to reduce the stigma around mental health and get children talking about complex feelings. Dr Weighall told Belle About Town: “Our research shows a strong relationship between poor sleep and reduced health related quality of life.

“Mental ill health can have a negative impact on sleep, likewise, poor sleep patterns can make mental health issues worse. I certainly think that lack of sleep can make mental health issues worse.”

In the short term, those struggling with sleep are more likely to be irritable and lacking in concentration, something that also impacts academic development, causing problems paying attention in class and keeping up with school work, as well as causing children to end up missing school because they feel unwell. It can also affect emotional regulation, which can affect peer relationships too.

Sleep deprivation decreases the efficiency of something called ‘top-down inhibition’ which enables children to control and regulate their behaviour. This behaviour has been shown to limit the functioning of the emotional processing at the centre of the brain (the amygdala) which explains the effects of lack of sleep on mood and emotion.

The research from the University of Leeds and Silentnight found that among concerns keeping children awake at night were worries about bullying and worries about homework, with one in six parents saying their children’s sleep has been affected by bullying,

Essentially, lack of sleep lowers the threshold at which we will experience an event as stressful.

The healthiest approach if your child is suffering from anxiety or feeling low is to try and establish a regular bedtime routine, ensuring they rise at the same time every day. When people suffer from anxiety or stress their sleep patterns can be compromised. This, Dr Anna Weighall argues, is when children need those precious ten hours that the NHS recommends.

Emily Cleary

After almost a decade chasing ambulances, and celebrities, for Fleet Street’s finest, Emily has taken it down a gear and settled for a (slightly!) slower pace of life in the suburbs. With a love of cheese and fine wine, Emily is more likely to be found chasing her toddlers round Kew Gardens than sipping champagne at a showbiz launch nowadays, or grabbing an hour out of her hectic freelancer’s life to chill out in a spa while hubby holds the babies. If only!

Editorial Policy

Belle About Town provides content we believe is of interest to intelligent and sophisticated urban women.

Our content and our activities are not guided by commercial pressures, nor by any financial interests or commercial affiliation of individual contributors. We try to test all that we write about and in doing so are sometimes given products and services free. However we only write about things we genuinely believe in.

We are interested in forming alliances that will benefit our readers/followers and will make these known. We will soon be doing reader offers to benefit those people who are regular visitors to Belle About Town. The ones related to articles will again be sourced after the article is written and not influence the articles. All readers offers will clearly marked as such.

Any affiliate links are added after the article is written and do not influence the content of the article.

We are a legitimate news site and we do not take down links that are relevant to a feature on the site unless it is part of a sponsored post so please do not ask us to do so.